Mr. Firth was born September 10, 1960 in Greyshott, Hampshire, England

Mr. Firth discovered acting in infant school playing "Jack Frost" in an annual pantomime. He has stated that at age fourteen, "I announced to myself and everyone else that I would become an actor."

After school, he worked as a stage-door keeper at the Shaw Theater and  as a workroom assistant  at  the National Theatre.

At age eighteen, Mr. Firth joined the amateur National Youth  Theatre where he was cast as "third fairy on the left" in A Midsummer Night's Dream.  He then studied for  three years (1980-82) at the Drama Centre, London where he played the title roles in Tartuffe, King Lear  and Hamlet.  He first attracted attention while playing "Hamlet" and was immediately  engaged to play "Bennet" in Another Country.

At the Drama Centre, Fettes explains, 'there is an insistence on the Stanislavsky Method'. The approach, which is Russian, is based on using your inner demons to express the emotions of your character; you turn your own frustration into someone else's. Fettes explains that while this approach 'simply doesn't suit the Anglo-Saxon temperament in many, many cases', Firth 'responded to the training on every level, right from the early stages'. 

Firth was taught the Laban theory of psychological types, and put through the paces of 'Russian emotional freedom and Jewish introspection'. He came to know the 'reality of the inner world'.

Mr. Firth married Livia Giuggioli**  on June 21, 1997 in Tuscany, Italy. The ceremony  took place in a 13th-century church in Citta della Pieve with 100 close friends and relatives attending. A picnic reception was held at a family estate nearby. 

The couple met in Columbia during the filming of Nostromo. Ms. Giuggioli worked as a personal assistant to producer Fernando Ghia while taking a break from  her English literature studies.
Mr. Firth's wife is the daughter of an Italian businessman and has lived with her family in a suburb of Rome.  She is 35.

The couple purchased a flat near the parents of the bride (in Rome), and Mr. Firth also owns a flat in Barnsbury, North London. It is expected that they will divide their time between Britain and Italy.  Their son Luca was born 29 March 2001 and a second child, Matteowas born August  2003.

Mr. Firth  has a 15-year-old son named  Will  who lives in Canada with his mother Meg Tilly.  The boy often visits his father in  England, and Mr. Firth visits in Canada whenever possible.

** Two spellings of this name are reported: Giuggioli (Nostromo credits) and Guiggioli  (most print reports).

Mr. Firth's grandparents were missionaries in India, which is where his parents met. His  family moved to Nigeria when he was an infant and lived there three years with later moves to England and St. Louis.  His father, David, is a history lecturer at King Alfred's College, in Winchester and his mother, Shirley, is a lecturer on comparative religions at the Open University.

He is the oldest of three children. Younger siblings are Jonathan (actor, Victoria & Albert, b. 6-Apr-1967)  andKate (stage actress, birth control counselor, b. 1962). Peter Firth is NOT related to Mr. Firth although this relationship has been reported by a number of otherwise reliable sources.

He plays the guitar.

In an interview, he listed:  Albert Finney, Donald Pleasance, Anthony Hopkins, Robert Duvall and Paul Scofield.

"Tom Birkin" in A Month in the Country and "Robert Lawrence" in Tumbledown.

He attended state schools in Winchester except for a year in St. Louis when his father was in an exchange program.

According to the Mirror Mr. Firth attended Ampleforth, near Thirsk, North Yorks...Froman article anout the school; "Old Boys include actor Colin Firth". 

"I suppose I am as much as everybody is, but I don't think I'm an excessively romantic guy. I find that romantic clichés don't appeal to me particularly. I am not a fan of Valentine's day, for instance, because I don't like an appointed day for roses and the show of romance. I think it's probably quite important to be imaginative and show an element of surprise about it all."